The Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations interested in improving national, state, and local energy and environmental policies. Our premise is that technical matters like these should be addressed by using Real Science (please consult WiseEnergy.org for more information).

A key element of AWED’s efforts is public education. Towards that end, every three weeks we put together a newsletter to balance what is found in the mainstream media about energy and the environment. We appreciate MasterResource for their assistance in publishing this information.

Some of the more important articles in this issue are:

Wind Energy: Local Economics 101

Some Local Legislators Perspective on Wind Energy

Local Maine wind ordinance: 2 mile setback, 25 dBA noise limit

Misleading Costs for Wind and Solar

Thirteen complaints filed against wind project for well water interference

Perry Orders FERC Rescue of Nukes, Coal

EPA Press Release about repeal of “Clean Power Plan”

Report: Five Myths About Nuclear Power

Aussie Revolution: Mounting High Level Attacks Against Renewable Energy

Study: Minnesota’s Energy Policy — The High Cost of Failure

Video: Puerto Rican Wind project destroyed by hurricane Maria

How Climate Scientists Got Their Global Warming Sums Wrong

Study: Why human CO2 does not change climate

Are Climate Models Overstating Warming?…

“The war against coal is over.”

– EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, quoted in Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis, “EPA Chief Tells Coal Miners He Will Repeal Power Plant Rule Tuesday, Washington Post, October 9, 2017.

“We are committed to righting the wrongs of the Obama administration by cleaning the regulatory slate.  Any replacement rule will be done carefully, properly, and with humility, by listening to all those affected by the rule.”

– EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, quoted in EPA, “”EPA Takes Another Step To Advance President Trump’s America First Strategy, Proposes Repeal Of “Clean Power Plan” News Release, October 10, 2017.

On Tuesday, EPA Scott Pruitt issued notice of a forthcoming Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANOPR) to repeal the (misnamed) Clean Power Plan (CPP). This action is the latest step away from the climate road to serfdom–and a signal to the world, not only the US, to focus on real here-and-now problems, not hypothetical futures ones with no clear solution.…

“[I]t is both pleasing and strange to see Joe Romm don a free market, pro-consumer, pro-taxpayer hat when it comes to nuclear. His (post-modernistic) dream is that wind power, solar power, and negawatts can usher in a post-fossil-fuel era. In reality, however, fossil fuels will replace nuclear to a large degree.”

“Perry Just Made Taxpayers Invest in a $25-billion Nuclear ‘Financial Quagmire.’” So read the headline of a recent post by Joe Romm (Center for American Progress). His subtitle: “Nuclear plants are money losers, but Perry is loaning billions more to the last new one being built.”

It is strange. Nuclear is the only scalable CO2-free electrical generation source known to man. Although it is the most expensive way to boil water (and hopelessly uneconomic compared to natural gas- and even coal-fired power), a stubborn, quasi-religious segment of the Climate Malthusians refuses to bulge.…

“If it were only so simple to pass a law and increase income and wealth. ‘One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than by their results,’ as the late free -market economist/educator Milton Friedman once said.”

The Houston Chronicle, as yesterday’s post documented, has gone from bad to worse in the hydrocarbon capital of the United States and world. The New York Times of Houston (the proper name for our supposedly hometown paper) seems to be at war with not only Donald Trump but also skeptics of climate alarmism and the free market more generally.

Along with climate-alarmist unsigned editorials, guest editorials, (selected) letters-to-the-editor, and cartoons, the Chronicle is all-in with Progressive notions. Consider the lead editorial on Labor Day, September 4, 2017.…